Jonathan Wright is a British journalist and literary translator. He studied Arabic, Turkish and Islamic civilization at St John's College, Oxford

St John's College, Oxford

__FORCETOC__St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford, one of the larger Oxford colleges with approximately 390 undergraduates, 200 postgraduates and over 100 academic staff. It was founded by Sir Thomas White, a merchant, in 1555, whose heart is buried in the chapel of...

. He joined the Reuters

Reuters

Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...

 news agency in 1980 as a correspondent, and has been based in the Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

 for most of the last three decades. He has served as Reuters' Cairo

Cairo

Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

 bureau chief, and he has lived and worked throughout the region, including in Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Tunisia and the Gulf.

Wright came to literary translation comparatively late. His first major work of translation was Taxi

Taxi (book)

Taxi is a collection of 58 short stories by Khaled Al Khamissi, first published in December 2006.A book dedicated "to the life that lives in the words of poor people." Taxi is a journey of urban sociology in the Egyptian capital through the voices of taxi drivers...

, the celebrated book by Egyptian writer Khaled al-Khamissi. This was published by Aflame Books in 2008. Since then, he has translated:

• The Madman of Freedom Square, a collection of short stories by the Iraqi author Hassan Blasim
  Hassan Blasim
  Hassan Blasim is an Iraqi-born film director and writer who lives in Finland. He writes in Arabic.Blasim went to Finland as a refugee in 2004 after getting in trouble when making the film The Wounded Camera in the Kurdish area in northern Iraq. He made four short films for the Finnish broadcasting...
  
   which was longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
  Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
  The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was inaugurated by British newspaper The Independent to honour contemporary fiction in translation in the United Kingdom. The award was first launched in 1990 and ran for five years before falling into abeyance. It was revived in 2001 with the financial support...
  
   in 2010
• Azazeel by Youssef Ziedan
  Youssef Ziedan
  Youssef Ziedan is an Egyptian scholar who specializes in Arabic and Islamic studies. He works as director of the Manuscript Center and Museum affiliated to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina...
  
   which won the Arabic Booker prize in 2009
• Judgment Day, a novel by the Lebanese writer Rasha al Ameer

Recently, Wright was appointed editor of the Arab Media & Society Journal, published by the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at the American University in Cairo

American University in Cairo

The American University in Cairo is an independent, non-profit, apolitical, secular institution of higher learning located in Cairo, Egypt...

.

Reference